Supporting Innovators in Healthcare

Imperial College Health Partners support innovation in healthcare through teaching and industry tools that further learning and entrepreneurial opportunities.

I was asked to lead the design of a new tool that would provide support and guidance to clinicians and SME’s throughout the innovation process.

Business Challenge

To support, guide and educate clinicians, researchers and SME’s through the healthcare innovation process.

Customer Insight

Many innovations get stuck at the research stage due to a lack of awareness of the development process and commercial planning.

Service Vision

To provide self evaluation tools throughout the innovation progress with actionable guidance and support material that makes it simpler to progress an innovation.

Process

The client goals were to demonstrate their expertise in the field, support innovation growth and development and develop closer relationships with innovators.

The service was aimed primarily at the individuals and SME’s who were developing innovative ideas but it also needed to accommodate the network of non-profit education and and business support organisations that worked with them.

The project borrowed concepts from the lean startup by moving from research through to prototypes and iterating based on data to guide the development of the service.

Research & prototyping

The client had done some initial research into the value proposition and service structure, so an analysis of the documents as well as key stakeholder interviews provided the insight required to map out how the service could be realised.

Sketching flows and interface ideas

I created a wireframed prototype to communicate the key flows and communication challenges. This was used to gather some early feedback from end users. The research sessions gave a strong sense of the unmet needs and aspirations they had while developing their innovation which enabled me to quickly test alternative possible solutions and prioritise the roadmap.

User research session

Figuring out the flow

Designing with data

The tested prototype was used to develop a responsive web tool. Analytics, behavioural tracking and email automations were used to build a high fidelity picture of how people were actually using the tool. This is an important step that often gets missed or dropped at the detriment of developing new services. By following through however means the client is not ‘flying-blind’ but rather has continued feedback and insight with which to shape successful ongoing service experiences.

The metrics we optimised for were New Promoter Score and Form completion. These gave us a sense of how people felt about the service and whether they could easily complete it.

Outcome

The innovation tool has given ICHP a powerful way to reach and grow their audience by building their expertise directly into the process. Through a process of research, prototyping and iteration I was able to validate the service proposition which led to a digital service that continues to deliver against the clients strategic goals.